This invention relates to the capture and display of files on a network. More specifically the invention relates to the display and management of items on sale at an online commerce site.
As Internet access has increased so to has the importance of e-commerce strategies for businesses. In 2000, 41.5% of U.S. households (44 million households) had Internet access. Global internet usage is at 34% with 15% of these users making an on-line purchase. 32% of all Internet users in the U.S. have made an on-line purchase. Of the items being purchased, the most popular include books, CDs, PC hardware and software, office supplies as well as apparel and accessories.
Much of the success of an online commerce site depends on how users interact online with the company. It is imperative that the online experience of a user be convenient and efficient to close on sales and maintain customer loyalty. The current experiences created by these sites have limitations. In particular, person-to-person commerce sites such as popular auction sites lack certain functions that would add convenience and efficiency to their transaction systems.
Internet auction sites such as Ebay, Yahoo, and other online commerce sites, have several things in common. The sellers are all registered and assigned a user identification. All items registered for sale are assigned unique identifiers. Among the user supplied detail information regarding an item for sale, a picture can be included. The sites have functions that allow visitors of the site to view items for sale grouped by predetermined criteria. The criteria could include viewing all items for sale by a particular seller but most often is viewing items for sale that match a phrase in the description of the item (such as show me all antique gold jewelry). A list is produced that includes multiple sellers of antique gold jewelry. The lists are usually sorted. The items might be shown chronologically in the order they were registered for sale with the newest registered showing first. They might be shown with the items registered for sale most recently. They might be shown with the least expensive items listed first or the most expensive items listed first. Typically once an item is no longer available for sale it is not shown in the list.
A site visitor can choose to learn more about a particular item in a list by clicking on a single entry displayed on the view. That action brings the site visitor to a detail view of that item containing detail information such as a description, a picture of the item, the current bid or cost of the item.
An individual seller's items have limited visibility in this typical demonstration since, unless the site visitor chooses to view all the items of the seller, there are typically thousands of competing items in a list. The seller's items are only most visible for the short time they are at the top of the list.